I’m making my first pepper sowing of the year this week and going from one extreme to the other. I’ve got plenty of varieties on my ‘to-grow’ list this year but I’m starting with both the hottest and sweetest.
First, and possibly too hot to eat, even for me, is Chilli ‘Norfolk Naga’ (Marshalls). If I can’t stand the heat, at least I know I’m growing a decorative plant that will look great on the patio during the summer months as the fruits swell and turn from green to red.
My other sowing this week is of another Marshalls variety, but this one sits at the other end of the heat spectrum. Sweet pepper ‘Snackbite Yellow’ will produce extremely sweet, small fruits with very few seeds, if any. This means they can be eaten whole – added to the pot or dropped into salad/lunchboxes and eaten raw. The fruits on this F1 hybrid, ripen from green to yellow on compact, bushy growth – again, another decorative addition for the patio this summer.
Though small pots or cell trays will get the job done, I start my chilli and pepper seeds in root trainer containers for early deep root development. These open out at potting on time to reveal the rootball, minimising damage during transplanting.
I use a 50:50mix of multipurpose compost and Surestart Seed and Cutting Compost to fill the containers and water this in before setting one seed per cell. The seeds are then covered with a thin layer of vermiculite.
Under a clear propagator lid, the warmth of the house is generally enough to get seed started but if you have a heated propagator, use this to aim for the ideal temperature of 18-25C. Seedlings should emerge within 7 days or so.
Kris Collins started out in gardening as an estates worker at Richmond Park, west London, before training as a Royal Parks apprentice at Greenwich Park (south east london). After a stint as greenkeeper at The London Golf Club, Kent, he made a move towards journalism as a reporter for Horticulture Week. He now writes for Amateur Gardening magazine, Britain’s best selling weekly gardening magazine, and tends his own garden in a leafy part of Hampshire.
